MUSE News

On this page, we list the main changes that affected MUSE and this web site.

News

25 October 2018

Between 17 - 25 October planned interventions for maintenance of the deformable secondary mirror (DSM), and replacement of motor segments of the Nasmyth B adapter/rotator were succesfully carried out. GALACSI and the Calibration Unit of MUSE had to be dismounted. The instrument has been succesfully put back in operations.

18 September 2018

The Science Verification observing run has been succesfully carried out between 5 - 18 September. Run completion information and data can be found at this link.

7 August 2018

Due to the failure of laser 4 the NFM Science Verification observation run planned for 7 - 11 August has been postponed.

4 August 2018

Laser number 4 has a problem which prevented us from carring out the Science Verification observations in NFM. We have also stopped observing MUSE WFM-AO. We expect to recover the laser by September 5th.

The outbursting comet C/2015 ER61 was observed on Apr. 08 2017 with MUSE. The MUSE observations, in WFM-NOAO-N mode, were made in the morning twilight. This dataset is available in the ESO Science Archive Facility.

12 December 2017

Data of the galaxy HRG00213 taken during technical time has been made publicly available. To obtaine it please go to the ESO archive.

Science verification observations of the WFM-AO mode were succesfully carried out. Nevertheless, due to poor weather these will be completed during a two night run scheduled during September.

24 July 2017

Some, not all, recent observations with the instrumenst at UT4 have exhibited ellipticity. While the cause of this occasional elongation is under investigation the following rules will be applied for MUSE OB classification:

If elongation is defined as: 100*(1 – B/A) %, where

A = FWHM along major axis of stellar object

B = FWHM along minor axis of stellar object

If there are obviously stellar objects in the reconstructed cube FoV, then

If elongation < 10% for most stars then class as A

If 10% < elongation < 20% for most stars class as B

If 20% < elongation class as C

If there are no stellar objects in the reconstructed cube FoV use the SGS and then

same as above but relax to 15% and 25% to account for the SGS distortions

If no stellar objects in FoV or SGS then write a comment indicating this and that the classification is based only on average FWHM measured by the telescope auto-guider.

We remind users of MUSE data that the SGS and Auto Guider information is saved in separate extensions of the MUSE raw science frames.

13 - 17 July 2017

MUSE+GALACSI commsisioning 2 has been succesfully completed.

Some details of the results will be published for the Call for Proposals fro P101.

14 - 18 June 2017

MUSE+GALACSI commissioning 1 has been succesfully completed.

First commissioning run of MUSE WFM fed with GLAO corrected images from GALACSI.

02 May 2017

Several changes to the instrument have occurred between 21 March and May 2nd. Please check Logbook of changes for details.

21 March 2017

First commissioning of GALACSI started.

6 March 2017

GALACSI has been installed in the Nasmyth B focus. MUSE is expected to re-start science operations (except time critical observations) around 21 April 2017.

GALACSI in the optical path has reduced the size of the SGS patrol field.

9 October 2016 - 10 November 2016

MUSE out due to installation of adaptive secondary mirror. The system has been recommissioned on 27 November 2016, and its functioning has been shown to be at the nominal performance. An internal report has been generated as document ESO-203117.

No changes observed. The barred galaxy HRG 00231 was observed on 27 November as part of the commissioning activities and the data was made public.

21 June 2016

Realignment of channels 01, 06, 09, 12, 13, and 19

All calibrations affected except bias and darks.

19 July 2015

The detector voltage configuration files for Channels 1 and 9 were changed. The first file with the new voltages is MUSE.2015-07-19T19:09:04.193.fits. This change affects BIAS, DARKS, FLATS, ARCS, and GEOMETRIES. Science taken after 2015-07-19 must be reduced with the calibration data taken after this date.

12 June 2015

The mean resolution of CHAN01 of MUSE degraded on 7 May 2015 from 3000 to 2550. We are currently investigating the origin of this change in resolution and hope to fix it as soon as possible. Notice that this channel had a particularly high resolution before March 31st which decreased after the exchange of detectors (see news from 31 Mar below) to a value similar to those of the other channels.

7 May 2015

The detector control system has been upgraded. There have been also a changes of cables and pre-amplifiers. This has reduced and stabilized the bias structure, and RON. Science data taken after this date should be reduced with calibrating data taken also after this date.

31 Mar 2015

The detector vessel of channel 1 has been exchanged. The old detector showed amplifier glow that we expect to eliminate with the new detector. Science data taken after this date should be reduced with calibrating data taken also after this date.

Version 0.18.2 of the MUSE pipeline and data reduction cookbook have been released, they can be found here. This version is necessary to reduce data taken when temperatures are below approximately 7°C: the recipe muse_flat has problem tracing some of the slices in channel 6. This is a known problem that we are currently working on and likely it will be fixed in the near future, however for the time being to overcome this problem we urge you to follow the recovery procedure described in section 8.2 of the latest Cookbook manual (version 0.18.2).

30 June 2014

Science verification observations were conducted between June 20 and June 29. Details and completion rate of the different proposals can be found here. The data can be found here.